Two Articles That Caught My Eye

We had a lazy day yesterday. A proper Sunday without too much on the agenda. As my muscles recovered from Saturday’s jog, hike, and lawn work, I had a chance to actually read Sunday’s paper on Sunday. A rarity.

Two articles that caught my eye:

First, this book review of The Prince Of The City: Giuliani, New York And The Genius Of American Life by James Traub.

Traub does a good job of summing up the pros and cons of Rudy. The real Rudy. Not just the hero Rudy, which he truly was, during the last few months of his term.

It was worth remembering that Rudy was a bit insane. An egomaniac with a mean streak. But Rudy was also a wonk and he appointed other wonks to his top positions. When he was in office, there were extended meetings with his staff and academics about the “broken window” theory of crime prevention, which he then operationalized. David Osborne’s book Reinventing Government was widely discussed. Academics (me) were brought in to observe organizational change and interview ground workers about their experiences.

That doesn’t seem to be happening in the Bloomberg administration, which has been dominated by Mike’s misguided obsessions, the Westside stadium and his Olympic dream. Oy, the whining from that man!

Oddly, I have yet to meet a New Yorker who wanted the stadium or the Olympics in NYC. Not one. If you’ve sat in traffic on a Friday evening in midtown, you have no interest in seeing another person set foot on that island. Put the damn thing in Staten Island. Bloomberg seems to finally be coming around to that that idea.

Bloomberg will probably get reelected, because his competition are Dinkins clones, and he hasn’t screwed things up that badly. But the Bloomberg administration does make one look fondly at the Rudy years with all its bizarre personal behavior, as well as its ambitious agenda.

The second article that I’ve been thinking about was a short piece in the magazine about infanticide. It was inevitable. The Schiavo affair has now turned eyes towards relieving all sorts of misery by death. The article discusses one of this country’s biggest travesties, the killing of Baby Doe. Baby Doe was a child with Down syndrome who was allowed to die rather than given a routine operation to clear her esophagus. Then it brings up more boarder line cases, like the child whose skin fell off.

I am holding back a rant on this topic. I just wanted to call attention to this topic, because I fear that it is going to be a major issue soon.

Oh, there were some other good stuff in the paper as well. Like the cover article on the Syrian president